ESRL/PSD Seminar Series

Abstracts

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Long-term atmospheric and cryospheric observations underpin our understanding of the current state of the Arctic climate and provide a means for monitoring change, gaining insight into the causes of change and supporting decisions to manage change. International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere (IASOA, http://iasoa.org) was initiated in 2005 to mobilize the considerable long-term observing assets at ten, independently-funded international Arctic observatories towards coordinated pan-Arctic science to understand Arctic change. This presentation will report on the progress we have made since 2012 on developing IASOA’s data sharing capabilities, including the creation of structured metadata for more than 40 datasets from NOAA’s Physical Science Division (PSL) and 182 datasets from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GMD). The guiding design principles for the IASOA data portal were to leverage existing efforts and to listen closely to the IASOA community about what motivated them to visit and contribute to data portals.

Synthesis science is the ultimate realization of IASOA’s mission. In 2013, IASOA facilitated the development of a science working group structure including experts from NOAA’s Physical Science and Global Monitoring Laboratorys. The accomplishments-to-date of these groups includes: 1) facilitating the installation of a new radiation suite at Summit station; 2) spearheading consistent processing routines for IASOA aethalometer and radiation datasets; and 3) two chapter contributions to the 2013 Arctic Report Card (Sharma et al., 2013; Key et al., 2013).

At the PSL flash seminar, I will report on progress towards our latest and most ambitious collaboration on Atmosphere-Surfaces exchanges of energy, moisture and carbon. It has been noted that the next generation of model improvements must focus on improved representations of coupled processes. This IASOA expert group will include atmosphere, terrestrial and cryosphere scientists; we will initially seek consistent processing and interoperability of Arctic “flux” datasets.

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